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The first speaker (Stripes) says, “This is my house, don’t piss on my carpet,” seems more-or-less agreeable: he has some unspecified standards, don’t violate them. It’s entirely metaphorical, however, so we have no idea at first what the speaker believes actually constitutes pissing on the carpet or whether his criteria are reasonable.

The response (by Overalls) is weird: “What if pissing is the only way to be heard?” This response implies that the standards is irrelevant if one can express her point of view can only by breaking them.

The conversation then takes a turn for the bizarre: Stripes says, “Don’t tell me how to enforce civility, you controlling bitch.” But Overalls isn’t telling Stripes how to enforce civility, or even what should or should not constitute civility; her rhetorical question* implies that her right to be heard overrides any standards Stripes might enforce.

*Presumably one author is writing the dialog; since Stripes does not actually answer the question as posed, we’re justified in concluding the question was intended to be rhetorical.

More importantly, by putting an intuitively rude, demeaning and unresponsive retort in Stripes’ mouth, the author appears to communicate that standards of “civility” are to some extent inherently an attempt at domination and marginalization of opposing viewpoints. This interpretation is confirmed by Stripes’ comment, “When you people talk, that’s the same as pissing on my carpet.”

This dialog is so blatantly slanted and devoid of actual argument that it appears to have nothing whatsoever to do with anything remotely resembling a discussion about standards of civility.

Probably one of the most frequent complaints I get is that I’m “uncivil”, which I have come to interpret as a complaint that I didn’t sufficiently fellate some self-important blowhard.

Presumably one author is writing the dialog; since Stripes does not actually answer the question as posed, we’re justified in concluding the question was intended to be rhetorical.

Ah… on a more careful reading of the post, I see this is a reenactment of an an actual exchange, so my presumption is probably not correct. Apparently even scientists can act in real life like obviously tendentious parodies of rational discourse.

in much the same sense as both the Islam-appeasing “multiculturalists”* vs. the Islam-bashing fascists are pretty much completely full of shit, so are both “sides” of this “debate” over “civility” seem to be mostly full of shit in different ways: “My opinion, however stupid, must be heard wherever and under whatever circumstances I please or I’m being censored” vs. “How dare you come here and disagree with me.”

*I agree with sensible versions of multiculturalism: it’s a big world, and not everyone has to celebrate May Day to be a good person.

This is not even close to what actually happened. Of course, memory is subjective in a way that recording (for example) is not. And you can’t vote on the truth. It is appalling to see how far people working in professions in which honesty is really fucking important will go to bend the truth according to their tastes. I really don’t see what’s at stake (that makes lying/exaggerating worth the trouble).

From the linked post: ‘This is my living room, so don’t piss on the floor. I reserve the right to block users and delete any comments that are uncivil, spam or offensive to all. I have a broad tolerance, but don’t test it, please. Try to remain coherent, polite and put forward positive arguments if engaged in debate. There are plenty of places you can accuse people of being pedophilic communist sexist pigs; don’t do it here.’

This seems like a reasonable statement.

Much to my amazement I am criticized very sharply for expressing what I thought (and still think) to be a perfectly reasonable view. The counter-argument is that the enforcement of ground rules is an act of white male patriarchy and acts to exclude certain subsets of society from taking part. I think this is tosh, actually, but some otherwise intelligent and articulate people seem to believe it. Are such ground rules inherently discriminatory, or are they fair?

I’m suspicious on general principles about this statement: I’m always suspicious when anyone puts words in their opponents’ mouths (and when I do it, you should be suspicious too). OTOH, it’s entirely plausible that Wilkins is accurately summarizing the opposing argument.

For a bunch of scientists, this whole topic is very thin on actual evidence.

Similarly, I’m suspicious of the cartoon. I have no idea what’s a quotation, what’s a paraphrase, and what’s pure tendentious invention. This whole conversation has the stench of the straw man and ad hominem. (Again, I hope you’ll excuse the incivility of these blatantly sexist metaphors).

From the comments on that post: “Scienceblogs is also full of pseudo-intellectual wankery drivel where half the Bloggers are permanently riding the racism/feminism/anti-religion band wagon giving each other high-fives and rimjobs/pats on the back every time they purport to stand up for someone else’s rights. You can hardly say anything without the Bloggers lambasting you for being a white, over-privileged, male bastion of everything that’s wrong with academia/the world as we know it.”

I LOL’d. Clearly the fellow writing this is uncomfortable considering the possibility that he is indeed white, male, and therefore overprivileged…? an idea which Comrade Physioprof seems to accept as applying to himself?